Take Root Visual Art Opening FREE Thursday, June 2, 7-9pm Join us in opening Dirtstar: Take Root, the Visual Arts Show showcasing Queer Sustainable Artists! This will be an opportunity to meet artists and check out the installations built in May!

Be there for the explosion of Jamie Q’s gay-bomb piñata, filled with silicone toys and safer-sex goodies generously donated by Babeland, Vixen, and Come As You Are, with glitter by Lit. Take Root Closing Performance Night (Sliding Scale, no one turned away for lack of funds)Sunday, June 19, 5-7pmBUY TICKETS for the closing night featuring fabulous performances and gorgeous Installations

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WORKSHOPS!

•••Water Collective Science Fair Workshop / Hydro-Labratory Sunday, May 15th 1-4pm FREE Calling all cloud catchers, dirt diggers, and sewer water snatchers. The Water Underground surfaces! Converge at the Tenderloin National Forest for a local hydro-laboratory. Taste test the SF waters, create a cloud in a box, and write your own aquafesto. Installation up through June 19th. The Water Underground/TNF2011 is July Cole, Sarolta Cump, Annie Danger, Sarah Kennedy, Qilo Matzen, Marko Muir, and Cleo Woelfle-Erskine. Contact: Qilo Matzen qilomatzen@gmail.com

•••Sex On Wheels Saturday, May 21st FREE *4-7pm: Meet at SF Public Library at 4 pm, Fulton St. steps, end at the Tenderloin National Forest/Luggage Store Annex between 6:30 and 7pm. Non-athletic ride, but riders should be game two or three moderate hills. 7:30pm Film screening at the Tenderloin National Forest/Luggage Store Annex A Sex Workers’ History of San Francisco Sex on Wheels traces the secret history of sex workers in San Francisco, CA. The film follows a bicycle tour of guerrilla street-theater performances that re-tell one city’s history from the point of view of its most sensational, but often forgotten residents. Contact: Jenny Worley jgworley@gmail.com

•••What’s Yours is Mine: Cultural Appropriation, Art and Ethics: Who is Representing What and How?Sunday, May 29th, 2-4pmThis is a two hour, interactive panel discussion on cultural appropriation with a focus on finding common language in order to delve deeper. “What’s Yours is Mine” will explore the power of the image and its conscious usage and representation. We will discuss the artist’s responsibility in the context of one’s individual experience as well as the cultural climate one sits within. Delineation between related concepts such as appropriation, sharing, accretion and exchange will be attempted. Part-panel discussion and part-potluck meal, this is not a debate of whether or not cultural appropriation, colonization, white supremacy or oppression exists in the present. It is a discussion of the many ways these issues play into our lives as artists and viewers.Participants are encouraged to bring dishes to share. Contact: Sara Sass Biscarra-Dilley sarah.biscarra@gmail.com

•••HomoMadeSunday, June 19th – 1-5pm (workshops from 1-4!) Join your dirty friends, your crafty queers, your handsome homos on this delightful tour of the Free Farm and the Tenderloin National Forest! We will explore what crafty queers can achieve when they put their dirty little fingers into the soil! And, because who doesn’t love a good gay workshop, there will be workshops on gardening (Finn from the Free Farm), flower essences (Joolie of HomoMade) and fermenting your own foods (Michele of Found Fruit), to boot! The tour will end up at the National Queer Arts performance night, DirtStar at the luggage store (www.dirtstar2011.wordpress.com).

Where: Meet up at the Free Farm in SF (corner of Gough and Eddy) where we will tour, work and workshop! Then we will head to the TNF to bask in the hidden natural beauty of the gritty ‘Loin. Cost: FREE!! but we will accept donations for ASL interpreter and workshop supplies:) What to bring: A bike!! (if you chose not to bike but want to come just meet up at the Free Farm and we will give you directions to the next spot), water, sunscreen, hat, stylish sunglasses, yr cutest dirty outfits.

Please RSVP– gurlshare@gmail.com, space is limited – when you RSVP we will let you know of the special workshop specific things you need to bring.

ASL Interpretation will be provided, but please let us know if you are coming and need interpretation

Our dear friends Annie Sprinkle and Elizabeth Stevens won’t be with us this year (they sure brought an amazing setup and show last year), but they will be taking root at Femina Potens in June, too! Check it out!